❖ WHEELING OUT THE GOLD DUST ❖

Master & pilot
Ralph W. Newcomb
Looking back with photographs 
of his career in the north.
Photo dated 1955.
Low res scan of an original photo from
the Saltwater People Historical Society© 

"Fabulous gold strikes...dog-team runs across the Arctic...inch-by-inch navigation of treacherous river channels...hard times...and gay, unforgettable times, too. 

      These were the memories of Captain Ralph Newcomb, one of the last of the pioneer ‘paddleboat’ skippers of the Northland who helped shape Alaska’s colorful history.

      Newcomb was a youth in Wisconsin when reports of gold strikes in the Klondike lured prospectors from every corner of the nation.

      Steamboat veterans of the Mississippi River were needed to man the ‘paddle-boats' pressed into service to carry gold seekers and their supplies into the booming North Country.

      Among those who cast their lot with the Klondike were Newcomb’s father, Capt. Orrin J. Newcomb, and his brother, Capt. Bertram Newcomb. They went north in 1898 and young Ralph Newcomb followed a year later.

      Steamers built 'outside' were dismantled and shipped to Captain’s Bay near Unalaska. There they were reassembled and towed to St. Michael, the former Russian community at the mouth of the mighty Yukon.

      These early vessels carried both passengers and freight. Most were about 225-feet long and were fired with spruce cordwood. Barges were shoved ahead or lashed alongside.

      Newcomb’s first assignment was as purser aboard the HANNAH, an Alaska Commercial Co. ship. 

His father was the captain and his brother was the pilot. Later Newcomb served on the BELLA and the SUSIE, two other fabled sternwheelers.

      The HANNAH took out more than $1,000,000 in gold dust in Newcomb’s year aboard her. The gold was kept in the purser’s office, with guards posted nearby.

      Newcomb, not taking any risks, placed a sheet of steel on the floor so thieves could not bore up through the floor and tap the bags.

      'Good thing, too,' he said. 'Later we found some shavings and judged they drilled until they hit metal.'

Newcomb made his first trips as a purser in 1901. The next year he became a “flat pilot,” using the knowledge of the river he was able to gain the year before.

      'My job was to take the boats over the Yukon Flats—the worst part of the river,' Newcomb explained.

      'It was so shallow there were times we couldn’t run. We needed at least 4 1/2 of water.'

      'I learned my way by just by making the trip several times. There were no charts, only what you made yourself.'

Sternwheeler SUSIE 
Built 1898 Unalaska, 223' /1,130 G.t.
Getting ready for a 1,600-mile run to Dawson.
Last used in 1917; 
abandoned at St. Michael in 1942.
Here, alongside her bud SARAH. 
Published by Edward H. Mitchell.
Photo card from the archives of Saltwater People Hist. Society© 

     

 In 1904 Newcomb became a full-fledged pilot on the SUSIE between St. Michael and Dawson, the rip-roaring frontier town.

      Newcomb remembers the turn of the century when more than 150 steamers, big and little, plied the Yukon.

      The St. Michael-Dawson run covered 1,600 miles. The upriver journey requires 12 days and the boats returned in half that time. 

      'I was a pilot for a long time,' Newcomb said. 'It took a while to become a captain with all of the experienced men around.'

      In 1921 Newcomb received his first post as master of a sternwheeler, hauling freight between Fairbanks and Tanana on the Tanana River. The boat, too, was named the Tanana, owned by the American Yukon Navigation Co.

      The river-shipping industry took a stiff jolt in 1923 when the long-sought Alaska Railroad was completed to Fairbanks.

      'That knocked out a lot of our business.' Newcomb said. 'Then they bridged the Tanana at Nenana and the big boats couldn't get through to Fairbanks.'

      Newcomb returned to piloting. He served with Capt. John S. McCann on the steamer YUKON until the famed skipper retired in 1938. Then Newcomb became master of the YUKON.

Steamer YUKON
hauling freight from Nenana, AK.,
at the confluence of the Tanana & Nenana Rivers.
64º33'53" N, 149º6'18" W.
Click image to enlarge.
original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      This was the era of tourist travel on the scenic canyon-walled Yukon River.

      The outbreak of the Second World War snuffed out the tourist trade. Newcomb was sent to the lower Yukon to haul military cargoes between Nenana and Galena. It was riverboats to the rescue as the Alaska Railroad was swamped with emergency shipments.

      The severe winter of 1946 spelled the end of the 'grand old lady of the river,' the YUKON. Ice damaged her hull, but Newcomb built cofferdams and made enough repairs to float the vessel into Nenana.

      The company then decided the YUKON was too old (built in 1913 and 1914 in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory) and pulled her from the river. She was stripped and left to decay.

      Newcomb 'retired' for the first time in 1947. But the river was his life. The Black Navigation Co. hired him to pilot small diesel boats on the Tanana. Later he went with the British Yukon Navigation Co., tugging barges from Mayo to Whitehorse.

      I'd sailed this area in 1922 and I knew the river,' Newcomb said. 'They needed experienced people.'

      In this period Newcomb served aboard the AKSALA –– formerly the ALASKA, the YUKON's sister ship, renamed by juggling a few letters.

      The boatman's last seasons were 1951 and 1952, with the black firm. He hauled freight again on the Tanana. Since then he has been a full-time resident of Seattle's Ballard District. 

      Even Newcomb, who had seen scores of bitterly disappointed men leave the goldfields as paupers were not immune to the lure of the gold trails. He spent several winters prospecting, 'but always a hundred yards off the paystreak.'

      The veteran steamboat man recalls one venture into the Yellow River in 1900, 'when I nearly starved to death.' He gave this account:

'It was a phony story about a gold strike. But we didn't know it then. To make matters worse, the last supply ship didn't get in in the fall and the few stores and missions there were mighty short of food.

      'Many turned back, including my father. But I had my neck bowed and kept going to see for my self what it was all about.'

       Newcomb's partner, a plucky Michigan man name Fred Bosworth, froze one foot and the men were forced to turn into an Indian village.

      The only shelter available was a crude shack with a 51/2-ft ceiling.

Eskimo residence 
Photograph by the well-known 
John E. Thwaites
Scan from an original in the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Six feet of new snow sifted down and the would-be prospectors had to remain in the village. Their only food was fish the natives had caught nearly three months before and stacked on the ice like pieces of firewood.

      A few weeks later the trail improved and Newcomb and Bosworth made it to a trading village 100-miles down the Kuskokwim River.

      By good fortune, an army contract doctor returning from a prospecting trip arrived in the village. Bosworth was stretched out on a table. Newcomb chloroformed him and the doctor amputated a piece of a toe.

      Then Newcomb returned his partner to St. Michael by sled. Newcomb walked the entire distance because there wasn't room for two on the sled.

      'But he was a wonderful partner.' Newcomb said. 'I never heard a whimper or whine out of him the whole time with all the pain.

      'It was rough, all right. But I wouldn't have missed it for a million dollars.'

Text by Stanton Patty for the Seattle Times March 1955.